Feline nutrition a hot topic at ACVIM
By Kim Campbell Thornton
June 7, 2009
Cats are finally starting to get their due. Among the cat-related health and nutrition talks at ACVIM were feline obesity; cats and calcium: the causes and consequences of hypercalcemia; novel proteins and diet formats (read “raw”) for dogs and cats; obesity in cats; the enigma of feline carbohydrate metabolism; and management of feline diabetes: diet, acarbose and problem cats.
I wasn’t able to attend all of these–my brain still hurts from the past few days–but I did takes extensive notes from the proceedings on talks of particular interest. Here’s some of what Kelly Swanson, Ph.D., from Urbana, Illinois, had to say about novel diets:
Despite the current body of evidence that clearly favors mainstream diets, it behooves pet food professionals and veterinarians to understand the rationale behind feeding novel diet formats. Because it is clear that an increasing number of pet owners are feeding home-prepared and/or raw diets, performing proper research on such diets is also of importance. Rather than simply dismissing these diets and/or owners as irrational (as I have heard countless times at scientific meetings), it is time to perform and publish the appropriate research in this area so that decisions may be made based on facts rather than anecdotes.
Feeding nontraditional diets is controversial, but both sides of the argument rely heavily on anecdotal evidence or a small number of case reports. In my opinion, both sources of information have their flaws. While veterinarians must make their decisions based on facts rather than anecdotes, they cannot rely on case reports alone. For every case report demonstrating the risks associated with raw diets, there is a media report describing the latest pet food recall. Until unbiased, properly designed, treatment-based experiments testing such diets have been performed and published in peer-reviewed journals, the argument will continue to be largely based on emotion and anecdotes rather than fact.
Ding ding ding ding ding!
I also spent quite a bit of time talking to Susan Little, DVM, president of the Winn Feline Foundation, about her take on the conference. Here’s what she had to say:
There have been some controversial nutrition topics here, especially today, and sorting through those is going to be difficult for most of the veterinarians. The talk that Dr. Zoran just gave [I'll have proceedings notes on that later] on feline obesity really strongly reinforced what we all should know about cats and obesity. What I liked about her talk and what I think is a big message that we really need to get out is that there should be as much focus on preventing it because it’s so hard to treat. She gave a lot of useful advice to veterinarians about counseling pet owners with kittens. Let’s start talking to pet owners who have kittens and help them prevent cats from getting fat instead of us all waiting until we have 10-pound 10-year-old diabetic cats. I wish there had been more vets in that talk, and I hope the ones that were in there get that take-home message that we need to be proactive.
Did you attend the session on novel diets?
I just came in at the end of that when they were talking about evaluating raw diets in big cats, which is too bad because Winn has just funded a study on feeding raw food diets to kittens. Amazingly enough to me, there’s been very little research done on feeding raw food diets to cats, yet something like 4 to 5 percent of the U.S. population feeds a raw food diet to their cats and nobody’s looking at that. We have a lot of scary information about the safety risks; I think we all recognize that, but nobody’s looked at it to see if there are health benefits. The study Winn has funded at the University of Tennessee is postulating that maybe there are some health benefits, particularly to immunity, maybe. When that study came across our review panel, we were all like ‘Wow, it’s about time.’ We’ve never seen a study presented to us to evaluate raw diets, so it’s way past time to look at some of that stuff.
Coming up: I talked horses with Mike Davis from Oklahoma State University, I have lots more on cat health, and some comments from veterinarians about what they’re taking home from the conference, including more info on MRSA treatment.
Ding ding ding, indeed!
Kim, thanks for your reporting. Next year we gotta get Christie to ACVIM. You guys can share shoe stories over proceedings. :)
Comment by Gina Spadafori — June 7, 2009 @ 8:14 pm
Interesting that manufactured kibble is considered a “traditional” diet for cats. I would think that it would be more like the gopher that The Princess nailed and had for dinner early this evening.
Comment by Susan Fox — June 7, 2009 @ 8:19 pm
Will be interesting to see what becomes of this.
I won’t feed raw because of my one cat’s health issues, but I’m planning on broaching the subject of a homemade diet with the vet when N goes in for his yearly in the near future.
N is a very large cat by nature, but he’s getting a little… too large. I absolutely cannot get him to do anything better than maintain on dry, and most good-quality canned food makes him vomit if he eats it for an extended period of time. (He’s had this issue since weaning.) He cannot continue to gain weight like this, and I don’t want him subsiding on junk food because it’s the only thing that doesn’t make him barf or balloon.
Will be interesting to see how that goes. I’ll probably see if I can get my hands on a quality hypoallergenic canned product before I attempt the other. (I hate cooking for MYSELF, and don’t relish the thought of doing it for the boys if I don’t have to!)
Comment by 3FabulousFelines — June 7, 2009 @ 8:47 pm
1. I thought 10 pounds was “average” for a cat? I know that’s what many med/wormer dosages are based on..1 cc= 10 pounds of cat.
2. Isn’t the “large body of research” mostly funded by pet food manufacturers?
3. Don’t vets really know very little about nutrition? I’m told they take 1-2 nutrition courses, if that, in vet school. Most of the time when I go into a vet’s office I’m surrounded by expensive corn-based foods for sale, which common sense should tell a person isn’t what cats are biologically engineered to be eating…
Comment by Kelley — June 7, 2009 @ 8:48 pm
Yes, Gina will send me to ACVIM the year it’s in Anaheim, LOL… but not Montreal, where I’ve always wanted to go.
She is punishing me for the 100 comments, I guess.
Comment by Christie Keith — June 7, 2009 @ 9:41 pm
There may be only 4% to 5% of cat owners feeding a raw diet to their cats, but a much, much larger percentage of cats eat raw as all or part of their diet. Not just ferals, and not just barn cats, either, but also a lot of ordinary indoor/outdoor cats with ample access to kibble or canned supplement their own diets with their own fresh-caught raw.
I’ve never bought the argument that raw is the natural diet for dogs (wolves evolved eating raw; dogs evolved from wolves eating human leftovers), but what we cheerily call the domestic cat has had a large percentage of raw in its diet for the entire history of its domestication.
Are these conferences on cat nutrition being run by twenty-somethings who really believe that kibble is a “traditional” diet for cats, or by people who never had any cats, not even any cats anywhere in the neighborhood, when they were kids?
Comment by Lis — June 8, 2009 @ 4:18 am
I love that the veterinary community is finally starting to look at the potential benefits of raw diets. While the concept of raw feeding makes sense to me, I haven’t been able to embrace it for my cat due to the health risks veterinarians keep warning against. I am, however, seeing the benefits of it in some of my clients’ animals, and I’m encouraged to see that the veterinary community seems to be more willing to look at that side of things. Please keep us updated on this topic!
Comment by Ingrid King — June 8, 2009 @ 4:20 am
Kind of ironic (and good) this conference was happening with another pet food recall going on..I sure hope all the vets had already known about it…Reading blog posts at various places that pet owners are still the ones to be notifying vet clinics…over 2 weeks after recall announced..
Comment by Carol V — June 8, 2009 @ 5:14 am
Interesting note: When I took the puppies in for the vet checks Friday, every exam room in the practice had the recall information prominently displayed, including pictures of the labels.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — June 8, 2009 @ 6:05 am
Well of course - they knew they had Ms. PetConnection HERSELF coming in to check up on them!!!!
Comment by The OTHER Pat — June 8, 2009 @ 7:47 am
Humans are the only animals that eat when they are not hungry, drink when they are not thirsty.
Comment by Steve — June 8, 2009 @ 8:02 am
Steve, you clearly don’t live with beagles or Labradors.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — June 8, 2009 @ 8:11 am
Humans are the only animals that eat when they are not hungry
Gina got there first, but it’s not just Labs, beagles or our friends the Rhodesian Ridgebacks. Cats eat when they’re not hungry, many zoo animals eat when they’re not hungry, and in fact, many species benefit from gorging themselves to create fat deposits that they can live on later.
There is an increasing body of evidence that in obese humans, too, the problem is not one of overeating or gluttony, but that the biochemical feedback system that lets the body “see” stored fat as a source of energy and fuel malfunctions. Our stored fat is kind of like a biochemical lipoma — fat that’s contained in our body, but walled off from it, so that the body just plain doesn’t see it’s there and doesn’t/can’t use it.
These kinds of messages are not based in science, and they’re not helpful in dealing with the problem of obesity in dogs, cats OR people. And in this case, as Gina pointed out, it’s not even an accurate observation.
Comment by Christie Keith — June 8, 2009 @ 8:20 am
and I say…when is a golden retriever NOT hungry…lol…
Jack…get off my computer….
wink wink
Comment by Carol V — June 8, 2009 @ 8:38 am
Thank you for the information. I find it a little strange that raw feeding is being called a “novel diet” because raw food is what cats are meant to be fed and is their species appropriate diet and I think the real “novel diet” is feeding them pet food or any kind of cooked food since cats were never meant to be fed cooked food. Cats have been domesticated for at least 138,000 years and in almost all of those years they would have eaten raw food. I agree that we need research as long as it is not invasive research but even without research logic should tell Vets that raw food is what Mother Nature meant cats to be fed. Here in Britain a Vet who is head of a Government Animal Welfare Group has told me in a letter that he wants an investigation into the funding of veterinary schools by pet food companies and into them being allowed to teach nutrition to veterinary students and I think that this too is vital research since the veterinary research that shows that pet food is causing cancer, kidney failure, diabetes, obesity, dilated cardiomyopathy, cystitis, struvite crystals, calcium oxalate stones etc. is being completely ignored by veterinary schools.
Comment by Fiona MacMillan — June 9, 2009 @ 5:44 am